Comments on: New Firefox Add-ons Site Goes Live

By: Mitch

Mitch — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:04:04 +0000

Thanks @Basil for stopping in again! :)

By: Morbus

Morbus — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:07:04 +0000

@ Basil Hashem
I hope you didn’t miss my sarcastic tone ;) Anyway, about the tip: yes, it does help, of course. Thank you.

By: Basil Hashem

Basil Hashem — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:58:08 +0000

@Morbus: Our designers are definitely not smarter than you but we did decide to optimize the primary use case to make sure that end users only install compatible add-ons. But we didn’t take away the capability to download any version of any add-on you want, you simply need to visit the “Advanced Details” section and take a look at the Complete Version History link – it includes all available versions and doesn’t do the smart detection so that testers, developers and others can download any version of an add-on (for whatever OS platform and edition of Firefox) you want without the hassle.

Here is an example: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/1865

Hope this helps.

@xpgeek: We have big plans for the themes area that I think you’ll like what’s in store – the pages today are what I consider to be “interim”. We want to do a large format themes browser that lets you quickly browser thru a whole selection. Unfortunately, we needed to punt on it for this revision.

By: Morbus

Morbus — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:02:42 +0000

Then again, and sorry for the flood (someone merge my posts?), NoScript, as the MUST HAVE extension it is, is our friend. By simply blocking the site’s javascript, you are able to download whatever extension you like. There you go stupid bad handholding web designers!!! Dumbing down everything huh? You didn’t count on us being smarter than you!!!

Mwhahahaha! :runs away laughing in a weird deranged way:

By: Morbus

Morbus — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:59:19 +0000

I take back what I said, it’s just one more click away. Fine by me. What I don’t like is the less control we have, not being able to install “incompatible” extensions, which not only sucks, but is bad too. Very bad.

By: Morbus

Morbus — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:53:58 +0000

Bad thing: no sort=date button. I only use that one… Less functional, prettier. Can’t complain much, as it’s probably less functional only to me, but I think they should add a link to sort extensions by date.

By: Win Norf

Win Norf — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:44:11 +0000

I like the design better, but it lacks a version compatibility check or “What’s New” section. I went to the new page and them registered thinking it would allow me to communicate with them. However, I do not know what benefit registration has for me and wished I had not done it.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:25:53 +0000

The themes section will more than likely change in the post-Firefox 3 era. Since there are a lot of basic format changes current themes will need to make to be compatible.

By: xpgeek

xpgeek — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:14:30 +0000

I don’t like it really. It won’t let me download “incompatible” addons AT ALL now, unless I manually change my useragent. Should be a away around that for people who know what they’re doing (example being I KNOW that addon works in latest Minefield nightly and I know how to use it, but can’t download it now). Doesn’t tell you what the compatible versions are anymore either so I just have to take a wild guess as to what to change my useragent too.

And its kind of hard to find themes now. Its now ‘themes and appearance’ and it throws a bunch of themes AND extensions together in the same category. So much for just browsing newly added. Kind of hard to find anything on it now without searching.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:50:06 +0000

Yep, I can confirm that too – had it tell me that one a few add-ons I was checking out. Also thanks for dropping by Basil, and congrats on a great roll out and release.